Broken Glass
by Dementia777
Summary: Something to compare himself to. That's all he wanted. He found through his endeavor that he was nothing but broken glass. Soaked in blood, with no one who chose to stay after being cut. Glittering in the falling sun while knowing he was not gold, and only able to watch as everyone passed him by.


Inspired by Perfectly Flawed by Otep

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Beauty was something that lacked an accurate definition. It was one of those words with an empty description next to it in the dictionary that could never capture the emotional attachment to it, because it meant something different to everyone that you asked. There was no one manifestation of beautiful that everyone acknowledged as such, no one thing that everyone could appreciate. Things to one person could be considered intolerable or ugly, to another person be thought beautiful. Yumichika had been met with the ignorance of many to his own beliefs of beauty.

For example, he believed the term "et cetera" flowed beautifully, but adversely anything with an "ow" or "ew" sound couldn't be pretty (such as chow, or knew), because those words lingered on the tongue when you said them. Any tongue twister, he felt, was just as bad in the same way. In battle, he believed those that died were often very beautiful in their struggle with preserving their life, and once the end was acknowledged Yumichika was treated with seeing the eyes of a soon to be deceased flashed with the beauty of all their life.

Never could he love such things, though, without meeting resistance.

"You're too picky. You even have letters and sounds that you don't like."

"Killing people just to see their eyes is psychotic."

It was as if no one could stand to allow him to enjoy himself. What harm could favorite and least favorite letters bring, what ends are accomplished criticizing how he battles (because how and why are so very different)?

By now Yumichika knew to concede, to give up. He knew that pleasing everyone wasn't possible, but he was too stubborn and set in his ways to change now. The futility of his actions was plain to him, every choice he made he knew that someone would show themselves to disapprove. When he chose to grow his hair out long, even while not having much of a comparison everyone would still jeer at him and mistake him as a woman. After he cut it, those who knew him with long hair thought it looked better when it was long and those who didn't know it long commented on it seeming awkward. When his attire was made of pastel and subtle adornments, he was informed that he folded into the background. When he added the bright orange, red and yellow adornments he was told that his uniform was too bright and distracting by those who knew his former subtle dress, and by those who didn't made up their minds that he was too eccentric to even bother with.

Though those were just the negative takes - there was such a thing as admirers of Yumichika. Some liked his dress, his hair, and even his eccentric and straight-forward behavior.

There were quite a few woman who want to know how he stays so "perfect" and others that are too prideful to admit they admire him as well and simply stay secretly envious. He didn't know why they would even think to call him perfect, because though he did feel beautiful at times, he's never thought perfect was an accurate description. Certainly nothing to be so admired.

When it seemed as though no one liked him, he craved approval. When he was showered with compliments, he longed for what he felt was honesty (what amounted to dislike). There only came the two things in droves and seemingly never accompanying one another, making him feel as if he were choosing between drowning or dying of thirst.

All outward vanity aside though, Yumichika was actually very honest with himself, and he'd always wanted something to compare himself to so that his beauty wouldn't be overlooked and his flaws would be noticed just the same. He wanted to get away from bias, at least in his own mind. Similar to how some strive to find a role model worthy of their admiration, Yumichika strove to find something that was worthy to represent himself. The perfect item came to him purely by chance one day while he was just getting ready to leave for work and he stumbled, dropping the mirror he normally carried with him in his pocket should something happen to mess up his hair. It was inexpensive and he'd replaced it a million times because of the brutish members in his division causing it to break time and time again, so he only sighed and went to the closet for a broom.

Though he was told to be at training before the sun rose, no one, not even the captain or lieutenant ever made it early so by the time he normally left it was usually well past noon, and the sun shone in his room brightly, and the broken glass shone and sparkled like gems when Yumichika came back from his closet. Perfect.

It was no exaggeration to say that the shattered glass was beautiful, from a certain vantage point at least. It looked like shards of crystal lying on the ground, sparkling to the point that it looked as if they were dancing in the sun. The closer Yumichika got, however, the less offensive the glare was and the more plain it became that there was nothing beautiful about the broken reflections, the sharp glass lying on the old oak floor. Yumichika reached down and picked up the largest fragment of glass, which wasn't even half as big as his palm and held it to show him his pale purple eyes. His carelessness in picking up the shard led to his fingers getting shallowly cut, and the blood ran down the glass, not completely eliminating himself but rather dying the image with red.

Truly perfect.

What could represent him better than this? He could shine and glitter and please the eyes, but he was merely capable of hurting those who decided to get too close. He was always flawed, ruined by something.

It was as if wind and wear broke him like the window of a once proud building, his long life breaking him instead of one instantaneous moment like his pocket mirror. Many people around him were blissfully and perfectly unaware of his state, and they'd probably die before they ever felt the way he did, even if they live longer. He felt as if since he spawned in the Spirit World, he was with an inescapable melancholy that became more and more possessive of him the longer he lived. There was a driving force behind the winds that caused him to collapse sooner than so many others, and he knew he'd never be able to pinpoint what made the glass weak or the winds stronger, but possibly because of the weight he'd always felt bearing down on him, he was never correct in the first place. Did he have greater enemies than most - or was his constant striving for perfection that he'd never obtain his one and only enemy? He couldn't force himself to stop thinking about it despite never achieving an answer he was satisfied with.

He didn't know, but maybe there was the silver lining. He had nothing to resent without knowing why he was the way he was.

He was broken glass all the same. Soaked in the blood of those stupid enough to try and walk over him, or use him, he was proud to always get back on anyone who wronged him. No one could ever succeeded in sweeping him to the side, no one could overcome him without being sliced. But each time he felt himself cut the one who'd hurt him, it was as if a piece of himself were stuck in the person, they were walking over glass carelessly and got shards of him embedded in their feet.

That piece would eventually get pulled out and discarded, the wound would heal and the one who'd been hurt would hardly remember afterward. But Yumichika couldn't forget or forgive someone for stepping on him. He was only broken glass, without legs to retrieve the piece that was lost, after all. He would never heal. How could anything heal from being spread across the world, people taking the pieces with them until it was convenient to throw them to the side?

Then to add insult to injury, his beauty wasn't even something that would always be looked on and admired. The closer one would come, the more they would see that it was only superficial beauty, and once they stood in clear view, all mystique would be gone. The glitter would lose the prospect of being gold. He'd be passed by.

Was it so unfair, once he thought about it without bias, though? He had sharp edges and transparent insides. He wasn't an intricate design or stained with a fascinating color. He was just plain. Broken. Rightfully alone.

Even Ikkaku didn't examine him. He was the one person who danced around the dangerous shards that littered the ground in Yumichika's mine field of a personality and stayed for company. That was a appreciated. But only because Ikkaku had never found the pieces of glass that had frosted patterns, telling of his secrets. His zanpakuto, his desires, his inhuman need for attention. Ikkaku only found the clear pieces that spoke nothing unpleasant about him. Yumichika would never let him find anything more than that.

Someone had seen a frosted piece, though. The closest someone got to understanding his well kept secrets was Yachiru. She understood him more than most thought possible of her. Captain Kenpachi walked on the field without worrying about the pieces that stuck to his feet, Yumichika was sure he didn't even feel the sting, and Kenpachi surely didn't examine any part of the ground and glass he was treading on.

Yachiru was a different story entirely, her infiltration skills were something that the Soul Society dreadfully underused and underestimated. She read the frosted pieces from afar while riding on the careless Captain's shoulder, never needing to dance around the traps laid about them. The only reason Yumichika knew she figured it out was she seemed extra sympathetic when he looked in the mirror, each and every time.

Nothing incriminating ever passed her lips and her eyes showed nothing to anyone but Yumichika. It was too blunt for someone like Yachiru to say something personal out loud and undisguised, whether it's in private or not. There was only one instance when she even said anything at all about the subject, and this instance is one Yumichika will never forget.

She had said; "Yun-yun, how come you always look in that even though you're pretty?"

To anyone but Yumichika, the question seemed simple and plain. A stupid question that only someone as childish and clueless as Yachiru would as - and so even though there was a group around at the time no one so much as glanced in their direction. But just as so many great writers had suggested time and time again, very little if anything at all, can be taken at face value. The phrase she used resembled herself - deceptive and indirect. They were like agents hiding under a guise of normalcy to say what needed to be said without being heard by a soul but who was supposed to hear.

What Yumichika heard, her true implications, was; "Yumichika, put the mirror down. It's not good for you. You're not being good to yourself."

A little kid. One who loved to draw pictures and spy on her much older crush in her free time (which was all the time), said this. She didn't want to play hop-scotch in a field of glass and pick up the frosted pieces. Yumichika doubted she even wanted to see the pieces, but she noticed them, and so felt she had to at least let the one who was suffering know that he didn't have to alone.

When the Captain spoke, no matter how great Yumichika's acting was, he might have let it flash in his eyes whether he was pleased or upset for a split second. Maybe he unconsciously reacted in some way when a beautiful person passed by who he was jealous of. Maybe the charade was just simple to someone who was trained to recognize such things, a pity masquerade with a mask full of holes on his face and poor reasons to continue pretending in the first place.

The point was; She knew more than he thought anyone knew before the incident happened. He nearly dropped his mirror when she said what she did. Everyone believed he was confident with his beauty because that's exactly what he wanted all of them to think. She looked past the badly painted mask without even trying and knew he only wanted people to think he was pretty. To approve of him.

The only one smart enough to worry about him was one who no one would believe even if she did decide to tell.

One small mercy.

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